MTG Salvation

It's tough to find, but try and dig up the thread that spoiled Dark Confidante.

The entire first page is just saying how bad it is and that Meddling Mage is far superior.

I can tell you guys that I've been maindecking Faerie Macabre for as long as I've been playing this deck (as a three-of) and I'm almost never disappointed in it. It works again Storm, Melira Pod, the mirror, affinity, gifts, and any deck with blue in it (I've won so many games with 3 life left after removing a Bolt that was about to get Snapcastered).

There's no arguing that its effect is less powerful than that of Jund Charm and there was a time I ran both in my main, 3 Faeries and 2 Charms. I've won off the back of every mode of Charm at some time or another, but sometimes I just find that Faerie being a free effect makes her a better card. Stumbling on land or even on colors can make Charm dead in your hand.

I know I haven't offered as detailed a rundown as other posts, but I just thought I'd offer my two cents while I have a minute.

Pics of the Cruel Ultimatum confirmed, no sign of Venser but what this guy has to say:

https://twitter.com/thatdamnaussie/status/358747847102967808

Sudden Death takes care of it no problem. Just wait until it's toughness is four and kill it, they can't respond by buffing it more.

Quote from NewbornMuse

I don't like it in aggro too much tbh, but against it, it's stellar. Once it has resolved, it's a board-impacting two for one that is virtually impossible to prevent (if they spend a burnspell on it, it's still a 2 for 1), all for a myr two mana.

Fixed that for you.

My cubemaster recently added Coralhelm Commander, and I just love that guy.

In my peasant I broke and added Serendib Efreet (technically but not technically an uncommon) because I just love the card so much.

They've already offered me a refund, which I promptly turned down in favor of waiting it out.

I feel pretty comfortable with the whole situation cause they have a brick and mortar location, which offers some credibility in my opinion. Not only that, their online store is done through a large store database thing, kind of like amazon. Prior to making my order I contacted their customer service and asked what they would do if the store ripped me off and they said that they would cover it.

Has anybody else had experiences with them?

Back before Commander's Arsenal got it's amazing hype, I pre-ordered two from them for $70 per. While I was at it, I went ahead and pre-ordered a box of RTR 'cause why not?

Well, apparently the first RTR box got "lost in the mail" (I never even received an e-mail about shipping confirmation, so I'm not entirely sure they ever sent this one). I contacted them and they said they'd send me another. With the release date of Commander's Arsenal looming and 'cause I'm such a great guy, I told them to hold it for a few days and send it along with the Arsenals to save themselves some shipping cost.

Date rolled around, they informed me they "hadn't gotten their full shipment" of Arsenals but my box was on the way (they did provide tracking this time). They said I could either hold out for the rest of their shipment or they'd refund me. Yeah, as long as I've got a clear line of communication with these guys I'm not letting them refund me $140 for what's worth significantly more than that.

So I durdled around until the date they said they'd be receiving the rest of their arsenals, still nothing. Sent an e-mail yesterday, they responded at 1 AM and claimed that their shipment had been held up by UPS and would be delayed. So that's where I am right now.

I'm pretty confident that no store got multiple shippings of that product. During preorder, they claimed to have 10 for sale total with 8 remaining when I ordered, making me theoretically number 6 and 7. I figure they're either trying to stall me out until I take the refund or scrambling to get a bunch to fill their orders. Has anyone else had much experience with these guys, particularly where their Commander's Arsenals are concerned?

Quote from ajprokos

I will reread through again to understand the land terminology... just came back after a 5 years (played Raffinity in 2007 when it was in standard before the bannings).

For $7 dollars, I bought a deck on MTGO. It has been AWESOME! This was just to test it and understand the mechanics of Living End. I like to test out decks online before I buy them.

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
4 Architects of Will 2 Avalanche Riders 1 Brindle Boar 4 Dreadshot Minotaur 2 Jungle Weaver 1 Loaming Shaman 4 Monstrous Carabid 1 Shriekmaw 2 Simian Spirit Guide 4 Street Wraith 2 Valley Rannet	2 Beast Within 2 Jund Charm 4 Violent Outburst 3 Demonic Dread 3 Living End 4 Blackcleave Cliffs 3 Copperline Gorge 3 Dragonskull Summit 1 Graven Cairns 1 Rootbound Crag 3 Forest 1 Mountain 3 Swamp

I had mana issues a few times ---- games were I had 6 lands with out mountains and forests or games where I had just mountains and swamps.

In addition to the list above, I do have spare cards to swap in to test: 3 Brindle Boar, 2 Faerie Macabre, 2 Ingot Chewer, 2 Loaming Shaman, 4 Obstinate Baloth, 1 Simian Spirit Guide.

Simian Spirit Guide really helped out early game to either be able to cycle an extra time turn 1 or get the 3rd mana to cascade turn 2.
Loaming Shaman was very helpful if my opponent too was sacrificing creatures OR I drew all 3 Living Ends and I need to put one back in the library.
Without fetches, Valley Rannet 4 out of 5 times was helpful.
Shriekmaw....only useful 1 out of 5 times

My favorite part of the deck is the LAND DESTRUCTION. With 2 Avalanche Riders, it was sooo much fun hard casting it, let it die, then cascade. Twice the effect.

One card I want to add in is Faerie Macabre ---- she can help fight their graveyard, act as a chump block, and be able to sacrificed from the field before Living End (from my speculations).

Sorry if the land stuff was complicated, here's a basic summary:
Scar duals - Copperline Gorge and friends. Definitely worth including.
M10 duals - Rootbound Crag and friends. Mediocre, but budget friendly.
Painlands - Karplusan Forest and friends. The life loss is going to hurt more than you think, but again they're budget friendly and don't come into play tapped turn one.
Shocklands - Stomping Ground and friends. More expensive money-wise, but you only need to run two or three in the entire deck if you have fetchlands.
Fetchlands - Verdant Catacombs and friends. Again a bit more expensive money-wise, but just ridiculously good for your mana base and usable in every deck (particularly if you're doing Magic online).

Several of the cards you listed are, in fact, basically auto-includes:
-Brindle Boar makes aggro match ups so much easier, plus it's hilarious to use a card that's viewed as so bad but we make it amazing.
-Faerie Macabre is one of the best cards in the deck. It just does everything this deck wants and is useful in every single match-up. You should try to run three.
-Ingot Chewer should be in the sideboard for graveyard hate.
-Loaming Shaman is a preference thing.
-Obstinate Baloth is sideboard against Jund, that's pretty much it.
-Simian Spirit Guide is the balls.

This deck's greatness skyrockets with the inclusion of Fulminator Mage, that guy is so insane especially if you nail it turn two with the help of a Spirit Guide. If you like what Avalanche Riders can do, you'll love him.

Generally speaking you shouldn't be aiming for the turn 2 cascade, since your graveyard isn't likely to be too full. Your cycler count is a little high, so you can drop either Jungle Weaver or Valley Rannet to make some room for any cards you want to try out. Jund Charm is also not entirely necessary in the mainboard.

Quote from ajprokos

I am the hardest time trying to figure out the mana base. I understand people have great results with Forbidden Orchard, but what could I do without it?

I have Blackcleave Cliffs, Copperline Gorge and Rootbound Crag due to my other decks having only 2 colors with 7/8 basic lands.

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
The deck posted by the OP has (minus the 3 lands I mentioned) 1 Dragonskull summit 1 Dryad Arbor 1 Karplusan forest 1 Llanowar Wastes 1 Sulfurous Springs 3 Swamps 1 Mountain 3 Forests	From other lists: 1 Overgrown Tomb 1 Blood Crypt 1 Stomping Ground 1 Verdant Catacombs 3 Arid Mesa	1 Graven Cairns 1 Fire-Lit Thicket 1 Savage Lands

I do not want to have Forbidden orchard or Dryad Arbor (unable to use these in other decks). I do not mind not using the lands that deal damage to you if you use colored mana (Karplusan Forest for example). With so many multicolored creatures and spells, how do I find the right mix of fetch and dual lands (overgrown tomb, blood crypt, stomping ground, verdant catacombs, etc)?

Thank you.


PS, any updated deck builds as the ones in the Primer are from a while ago? The reason I ask is because some of the current builds a few pages in start using Loaming Shaman, Avalanche Riders, Simian Spirit Guide.

This deck is blessed with having the easiest mana in modern and the ability to use Scars duals very effectively. The sheer amount of card draw and hybrid makes life so easy for us it's amazing.

Forbidden Orchard is good, since it gives us any color and a target for Demonic Dread, but many people shy away from it since we're somewhat susceptible to our life total dropping very quickly if our opponents are aggressive enough. As such, it's not an auto-include by any means.

Blackcleave and Copperline are the most important to have. They are just amazing in this deck, giving us color diversity early while having a drawback that isn't too harsh for us a little later in most circumstances. I like the M10 style duals a little less, simply because they're just a little too conditional. Painlands suffer from the same drawback as Orchard where it just hurts our life total as well as not helping the M10 dual situation (if you choose to run them). Filter lands are hit or miss. They don't work for us turn one, much like the M10 duals, which is pretty major. Same with Savage Lands.

Obviously shocks and fetches are the way to go. The one-shot to our life total isn't as bad as the constant pain from painlands and if you don't need the mana right away you can choose not to take the damage or just get a basic land to avoid that altogether. Personally, I only run two shocklands in my whole list and I very rarely have a problem. Having enough fetches affords us the luxury of only having to run a few shocklands, you can get away with just one of each or less (I don't even run a Blood Crypt, personally).

Dryad Arbor should never, ever be run in this deck it's terribad to cascade into it. Derp.

You can check the last couple of pages for sample lists, it really should get updated. A lot of these inclusions are personal preference and you should test to see what you like. After having used Spirit Guide I'm not sure I ever want to play the deck without him, but I find Loaming Shaman somewhat hit or miss. Avalanche Riders is in most lists, it's just a question of how many most of the time.

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Quote from PopeJP »

Rather than make a new thread I'll just ask here: why are foil Goblin Guides so close in price to non-foils? It's only a couple of bucks it seems. Do people generally favor the GP promo?

Goblin Guide is a powerful card in s "budget" deck. People who are making Red Deck Wins or some variant are generally not attempting to foil out their deck - if they have the money for a foil, they'd rather spend it on a better sideboard option.

Was playing Melek, Izzet Paragon spellslinger. Phelddagrif was at the table. Game winds up with just me and him left.

He plays Dovescape
Had to let it resolve.
I get Melek out, since he allows me to play around Dovescape.
Phelddagrif plays Guile

Counterflux

What about Crackleburr? Too mana intensive? Quicksilver Dagger, while it doesn't grant creature ping, does provide you with a means to draw extra cards while also whittling away at the opponent's life.

Because I toured with Phish throughout the 90's. Plus I tour with them to this day (summer can't come soon enough!) Played a lot of magic between gigs and friends always called me "The Sloth". Namely because Phish sings a song that goes

They call me The Sloth (Way Down in the Ghetto)
Italian Spaghetti (Singing Falsetto)
Sleeping All Day (Rip Van Winklin')
Spend My Nights in Bars (Glasses Tinklin')

I'm so Bad (He's so Nasty)
Aint got no Friends (Real Outcasty)
Stay outta my Way (You'll end up a Cripple)
I'll Take This Piece of Paper (and Slice Your Nipple)

Always loved that song and became quite good at calling it in the setlists. Unfortunately it's a rarity these days, also I'd play on the "paper nipple slicer" line and slice nips with my magic cards.

Momentous Fall is pretty junky, save for in a pure green deck, I can't stand it's double green cost, I wish it was 3G instead. As far as waiting till later in the game to use some thing like Life's Legacy, I mean it's pretty good early on to, a dumb beast token nets 3 cards for two mana, Sad Robot gets you 3 as well, so in both examples that's drawing 4 cards in a turn for two mana. Who cares about combat tricks, Life's Legacy can help draw into good stuff early on, it's an even dumber one shot with Skullclamp. I'd buy the "It's not good because it's not a instant" argument if it cost 4 mana or more, Yawgmoth's Will is a sorcery, it's good because it's cheap so you can cast it and do a bunch of dumb stuff, Life's Legacy is similar it only costs 2 so you can probably cast more stuff on your turn after you cast it, and it's still not lame if cast early on (like Yawg's Will).

I don't know how crazy it is, but a 3 player game, me playing Norin, the wary (not complete the builds seen here), a friend playing reaper king (obnoxious good stuff based control), and a third playing ulasht, the hate seed (every red/green combo he could squeeze into it).

It's late game, I'm at a low life total, Reaper has one heck of a pillow fort down (tooth and nail into avacyn, angel of hope and blazing archon with privileged position down) while Ulasht has just comboed off for about 2 billion life and tokens (squirrel nest, earthcraft, and essence warden), while I'm sitting here with nothing but a ton of lands, a goblin welder, norin the wary, genesis chamber, and about 17 myr tokens, and memory jar in hand. My turn comes, my topdeck? thornbite staff. I have 12 mana available at this point, I drop staff, equip it to welder, then drop the jar and sacrifice it, putting its ability on the stack. I immediately use a myr token (artifact creature) with the welder to get the jar back and creating an untap trigger for the staff. I let the untap trigger resolve, untapping welder, and then activate the jar again, repeat until all myr tokens are gone, and 17 activations of memory jar are on the stack. Now, I don't win, but I earn concessions from both reaper king and ulasht for getting off a four card library exiling combo for 85 cards (we're all well below this) in a deck that they least expected to be able to and I had forgotten even could.

Note the wording of the first blog post; he says it is a mechanic that he didn't think they would bring back. Affinity is one that he does think could return (he's said that many times in the past, it was even included in early designs for Scars of Mirrodin if I recall).

Quote from Lemonbuster »

Quote from PopeJP »

He gets infinite counters on Animar laughably easily, not to mention he's searchable with Eye of Ugin.

And how does he do that? Even if he was able to be bounced with Cloudstone Curio (he's not), these lists feature literally zero ways to tutor for Cloudstone Curio, so to say it's laughably easy doesnt seem right. It's a 100 card singleton format.The all in combo versions probably want him but he's only marginally better than Dream Stalker and co with Animar out miles behind in powerlevel when he's not out. I wouldn't call it an auto include.

Because it can bounce itself?

I’ve searched around the net and found a handful of slightly different ways to play Diaochan. I didn’t like most of what I read, so in case anyone else is running into the same problem, maybe you’ll stumble across this overview and will appreciate the deck workflow I have personally hammered out.

I really like the idea of running mono-red in EDH. Before Diaochan, I ran a pretty powerful Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer deck that usually closed out the same way every time: turn their things into artifacts and blow up the world while I float into a big creature or stay alive with Darksteel Forge. Slobad probably has ways to “spice things up” if you’re into combos, but I don’t personally have a taste for winning by going infinite. So, I began to look around for another commander.

Diaochan can be brutal. But there are a couple things you need to keep in mind.

• Obviously, the timeframe in which you can use her ability is limited to the first part of your turn.
• Because your opponent’s selection of a creature is part of your own creature’s ability, hexproof won’t protect her.
• Your opponent can choose the same creature you chose. That is, if you’re in a 3-player match and each player has one creature on the field (yours being a Greaves’d Diaochan), you can choose to blow up Dan’s creature; but instead of choosing to blow up Bob’s creature, Dan can just select his own again! Meaning you completely clearing the board with Diaochan isn’t a guarantee.
• Diaochan herself doesn’t really close out games.

Seems like a lot of negatives, right? It's really not all that bad in practice. I contend that she’s still right for you if:

• You’ve always wanted Avatar of Woe as your general.
• You like to generate some level of politics in your matches.
• You like having somewhat obscure generals.
• You like being one of the biggest threats (possibly the biggest threat) at the table.
• You like big spells.

You might not like her, though, if:

• The negative form of most of the above are true.
• You get super frustrated when people blow up your mana doublers (this will happen regularly).
• You like playing especially passively.

Alright then. So here is my deck list which is constructed to "dance around" Diaochan.



Now, there are many different ways games with this deck can roll out depending on what you draw and what your opponents are playing. In general, though, you can aim yourself at one (or both?) of these broad strategies:

1. Establish Diaochan as a primary threat for the table and successfully plant creatures that "dance" around her by being transient (the neatest way IMO), indestructible, or shrouded/prot-red'd.
2. Play defensively, gain a little bit of life, and burn everything.

Draw Engine



I've included a few draw cards in this deck list, the one requiring the most work being Skullclamp. You can use it fairly easily in conjunction with Kher Keep, Orochi Hatchery, and Goblin Assault.

Transient Creatures



Use cards like Genju of the Spires, Chimeric Staff, Chimeric Mass, and Koth of the Hammer to beat your opponents down with creatures that you only allow to exist after you've resolved Diaochan's ability.

I'm going to stop writing for now, but if you have any comments on my list, feel free to share your thoughts below!

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